Democracy direct

In a modern constitutional democracy, laws are created via a hierarchical legislative process. You will find the principal legal principles laid down in a constitution, which derives its legitimacy directly from the will of the people and can only be amended via referendum. The constitution sets out your basic rights as an individual in the... 

A distinction should be made between the different levels of political influence operating at different levels of policy. At the macro level, the body politic is regarded as representative of the public or the electorate. Hence, politics is a means by which society decides which regulatory direction is ethically acceptable, socially preferable, economically beneficial and scientifically reliable. From the perspective of representative democracy, therefore, it is desirable for politics to determine the overall legal frameworks within which dmgs are regulated. But at the micro level, where decisions are made which apply those legal frameworks to specific cases, it is not desirable for politics to exert influence on individual cases. 

Politicians in our parliamentary democracies who wish to please public opinion feel the urge to take into account demands that are more emotional than scientific, and advocate restrictions even when these go against the best interests of the citizens. The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in the United States which resulted in no fatalities, the more recent Chernobyl explosion which, as of 1988 had directly caused two deaths, have, with no good reason, prevented any resumption of the U.S. nuclear program and have aroused fears in European countries in people least likely to give way to mass hysteria. 

That a dacha was at the center of national debates about democracy, capitalism, and the political fortunes of Russia s leaders was neither coincidental nor surprising to Russian observers. Throughout Russia s history, dachas and the lifestyles associated with them, especially the extravagant lifestyles of elites, have served as powerful markers of the nature of political life in Russia. Today they offer visual markers of Russia s postsocialist transition and the often conflicting and confusing directions this transition has taken. The scrutiny of elite dachas that was sparked by Dachagate... 

Luxemburg differed most sharply with Lenin in her relative faith in the autonomous creativity of the working class. Her optimism in Mass-Strike, Party, and Trade Unions" is partly due to the fact that it was written, unlike What Is to Be Done after the object lesson of worker militancy provided by the 1905 revolution. Luxemburg was especially struck by the massive response of the Warsaw proletariat to the revolution of 1905. On the other hand, Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy was written before the events of 1905 and in direct reply to What Is to Be Done This essay was a key text in the refusal of the Polish party to place itself under the central discipline of the Russian Social Democratic Party. 

Lenin, quoted in Averich, Kronstadt, 1921, p. 160.1 believe that Lenin is consciously copying Luxemburg here, although I have no direct proof. One can find a precedent for this in Lenin s momentary euphoria about the 1905 revolution "Revolutions are the festival of the oppressed and the exploited. At no other time are the masses of the people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order as at the time of revolution. At such times, the people are capable of performing miracles (from Two Tactics of Social Democracy, quoted by Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution [New York Oxford University Press, 1989], p. 42). 

Lest one imagine that the state coercion to be applied would be decided democratically by the proletariat or its representatives, Lenin makes it clear just after the revolution that, as Leszek Kolakowski puts it, "the point about the dictatorship of the proletariat... is the absolute power, constrained by no laws, based on sheer, direct violence. And he said that there would be no freedom and no democracy (those were his very words) until the complete victory of Communism all over the world ( A Calamitous Accident, Times Literary Supplement, November 6, 1992, p. 5). 

The UK is constituted cis a parliamentary democracy with a monarch cis the Head of State. All legislation in the UK, including that originating from the European Directives, must be passed by Parliament and the Head of State before it is enacted. 

Obinger H (1998) Federalism, Direct Democracy, and Welfare State Development in Switzerland. Journal ofPublic Policy 18 (3) 241-263 OECD (2000) OECD Employment Outlook 2000. OECD, Paris OECD (2005) OECD Employment Outlook 2005. OECD, Paris OFAS (2005) Statistique des assurances sociales. OFAS, Berne... 

The defining trust in the value of knowledge that Oppenheimer ascribes here to science echoes Bohr s succinct formulation of the value of openness The very fact that knowledge is itself the basis of civihzation points directly to openness as the way to overcome the present crisis. Long before them Thomas Jefferson, secure in his understanding of the core principles of democracy, professed a similar conviction. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, he wrote late in life and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise that control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion. ... 

---